Endangered Frogs Rescued by Detroit Zoo

Endangered frogs were recently bred and released into the wild due to the diligence of the Detroit Zoo. Twenty-five dusky gopher frogs were taken to the Ward Bayou Wildlife Management Area in Southern Mississippi in hopes of jump starting their dismissing population (Detroit News). The previous population was dwindled to roughly one hundred so twenty-five is actually a huge improvement (Red List).

The frogs were once very common in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi but now are centralized to a single county in Mississippi (Red List). Their endangerment is entirely due to urbanization of their very specialized habitat, the longleaf pine forests (Wildscreen Arkive). The frogs are losing their required habitat in favor of greater cityscapes and utilization of the fossil fuels in their forests.

Any step to preserve the environment is important, but the dusky gopher frog’s perseveration does take some presidence; the dusky gopher frog is the most critically endangered species in North America (Wildscreen Arkive). It is an amazing thought that we could be involved locally with correcting such a large scale issue. If you find yourself trying to spot one, they spend most of their time underground, but they do come to surface in ponds when they’re ready to mate. The frogs are brown, gray, or black with some variation of color in ridges on their back (Detroit News).